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Archaean continental spreading inferred from seismic images of the Yilgarn Craton

Nature Geoscience volume 11, pages 526–530 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

On the early Earth, oceanic plateaux similar to present-day Iceland are thought to have evolved into less dense microcontinents as they thickened by continued melt intrusion and crustal fractionation. These earliest continents may have been so weak on a hotter Earth that they collapsed laterally in response to thickening by further magmatic growth or tectonic imbrication. This continental spreading is likely to have resulted in the development of pervasive ductile strain fabrics in the deeper crust, which, if preserved, could generate seismic reflections. Here we present seismic images from the ancient core of the Archaean Yilgarn Craton of Australia that reveal shallowly dipping to horizontal reflections that pervade the middle and lower crust. We interpret these reflective fabrics as the result of widespread lateral crustal flow during the late stage of craton evolution approximately 2.66 to 2.61 billion years ago, which coincided with the widespread intrusion of high-temperature crustal melts, as thickened early continental crust collapsed. The consequent subsidence of large regions of the upper crust, including volcanic and sedimentary greenstone rocks, in the hanging walls of listric mid-lower crustal ductile flow fabrics caused these rocks to drop beneath the granitic melts rising towards the surface, and did not involve Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities within a mostly mobile crust.

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Fig. 1: Major terranes of the Archaean Yilgarn Craton in Australia with location of seismic lines.
Fig. 2: Seismic section from line 10GA-YU2 across the northeastern Youanmi Terrane.
Fig. 3: Seismic images showing reflections within greenstone rocks extending beneath younger granitoid plutons.
Fig. 4: Continental spreading and greenstone subsidence due to lower crustal flow.

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Acknowledgements

R. Costelloe and L. Jones carried out the prestack seismic processing of line YU2. We thank R. Blewett, R. Korsch and D. Champion for comments that improved an early version of this paper. The field acquisition was funded by Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of Western Australia. This project was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada and Geoscience Australia. M.P.D. is publishing with the permission of the CEO of Geoscience Australia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

    Andrew J. Calvert

  2. Mineral Systems Branch, Resources Division, Geoscience Australia, Symonston, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Michael P. Doublier

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A.J.C. interpreted the seismic data and wrote most of the paper; M.P.D. interpreted the seismic data and provided the geological framework.

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Correspondence to Andrew J. Calvert.

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Calvert, A.J., Doublier, M.P. Archaean continental spreading inferred from seismic images of the Yilgarn Craton. Nature Geosci 11, 526–530 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0138-0

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